Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons – Quotes

As the book is really funny I picked some of the quotes that made me laugh, they should also give you na idea of the kind of humour Gibbons is using. Enjoy!

The life of the journalist is poor, nasty, brutish and short. So is his style. You, who are so adept at the lovely polishing of every grave and lucent phrase, will realize the magnitude of the task which confronted me when I found, after spending ten years as a journalist, learning to say exactly what I mean in short sentences, that I must learn, if I was to achieve literature and favourable reviews, to write as though I were not quite sure about what I meant but was jolly well going to say something all the same in sentences as long as possible. – from a letter to Anthony Pookworthy

‘I am only nineteen, but I have already observed that, whereas there still lingers some absurd prejudice against living on one’s friends, no limits are set, either by society or be one’s own conscience, to the amount one may impose upon one’s family.’

‘I would write to the tonight, only I think we ought to dine out – don’t you? – to celebrate the inauguration of my career as a parasite.’

‘You have the most revolting Florence Nightingale complex,’ said Mrs Smiling.

Graceless, Pointless, Feckless and Aimless awaited their turn to be milked.

The porridge gave an ominous, leering heave; it might almost have been endowed with life, so uncannily did its movements keep pace with the human passions that throbbed above it.

She liked Victoria novels. They were the only kind of novel you could read while you were eating an apple.

Somebody was playing a shocking tune on the poor little wheezy organ near the door.

‘And why does he conduct the music with a poker?’
‘To put us in mind o’ hell fire,’ was the simple answer, and Flora had not the heart to say that as far as she was concerned, at any rate, this purpose was not achieved.

‘Ye’re all damned!’
An expression of lively interest and satisfaction passed over the faces of the Brethren, and there was a general rearranging of arms and legs as though they wanted to sit as comfortably as possible while listening to the bad news.

Like most other ideas, the idea would simply not have entered his head.